I jumped on board the Amy Schumer train late. Indeed, if we're sticking with the metaphor, the train had left the cooler parts of Brooklyn and was already dropping people off near the ferry to Stanton Island by the time I started into the third season of her Comedy Central show, "Inside Amy Schumer" early this spring. I began with the now Emmy-nominated gateway drug, "Girl, You Don't Need Makeup." The sharp-tongued G-rated skit captures the comedian at her most commercially subversive. By spoofing One Direction's "You Don't Know You're Beautiful," she achieves an equally catchy and brutal takedown of the profoundly hypocritical double standards in beauty that exist for women today. For the 99 percent of the female population who didn't #wakeuplikethis, Schumer reminds us that beneath the feel-good Dove ads, the real message is still, sadly: Pull yourselves together, you uggos.
The genius of the viral hit can be found in Schumer's seemingly effortless ability to distill a counter narrative to a mass audience in an entertaining, inviting way. It's what has made her star shine so deservedly this year. She's transforming the conversation by having men and women see the world through a non-slanted mirror. She achieves this feat in part because she so willingly holds the same mirror up to herself in her work, as she writes about the world as she sees it: a place where men behave disappointingly and women go along with it.
I couldn't wait to see what she would do with a romantic comedy format. In Schumer's recent cover story in GQ-- the kind of men's magazine that her character in the film writes for-- Schumer said that 30 percent of her new movie "Trainwreck," directed by Judd Apatow, was lifted straight from her life and the rest was an exaggeration. She said she came up with the script's premise when she started falling in love. The relationship lasted a few months until he told her that he was a sex addict. They broke up, but in "Trainwreck," she explores what it would have been like if he hadn't been a sex addict and instead, she had started falling in love with a decent guy.
Coming out of the film, I wished she had steered the script closer to her own reality. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed "Trainwreck" and Schumer makes her mark on the genre-- the first keyword that comes up for it on IMBD is, refreshingly, "male nudity" and the film unflinchingly weaves in points on gender, race and sexuality during the standard rom-com banter. When one of the characters in the film says that she hasn't told her son what gay people are during tea, Amy responds with, "Well…they're people."
It's the last act of "Trainwreck," when Schumer accepts that she is worthy of love, where I found myself feeling let down, somehow. In the film, Schumer plays Amy, who's doing just fine, thanks for asking. She's a "modern chick who does what she wants" with good friends, a nice apartment and a job as a writer in New York. But her character is broken. She has attachment issues and an emotional learning curve to climb stemming from her experience growing up with her father, her best friend, who at a young age tells her "monogamy isn't realistic" before leaving her mom. She's carried that advice with her, playing the field and carefully avoiding meaningful attachments, until that is, she's assigned to write a profile on sports surgeon Aaron Conner (played by the charming by Bill Hadar). Aaron is a too-good-to-be-true Doctors Without Borders volunteer, who just so happens to be best friends with LeBron James and is open to a committed relationship.
With him as a foil, the movie falls short. Maybe guys like Aaron exist in real life, but as her own experience has shown, often it's not the Doctors Without Borders volunteer you fall in love with. Or maybe it is, but he's more likely a Doctors Without Borders volunteer who is also a sex addict. Sure, as a character, Aaron isn't a manic pixie dream guy. His sole purpose in life isn't to get Amy to take a quirky road trip through the Jersey countryside. And let's be real, if he tried that, Amy would probably stop that car before it crossed the George Washington Bridge. But at the same time, his character has no major hang ups, no realistic reason to suggest why exactly he hasn't been on a date in years. He's friends with LeBron James, who could easily fix him up with a nice girl from Cleveland. Yes, Aaron has a weird obsession with Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," but that's hardly a deal breaker. Hadar plays a decent guy. The only "trainwreck" in the film is Amy. And so when the relationship inevitably runs into trouble, it's clear where the fault lies.
Amy needs to learn to love herself and accept that she is capable of the love of a good person. Her relationship with Aaron is what allows her to come to a place where she can accept that. But I wish she came to that conclusion in the film for herself, not for him. Schumer has built an incredible career writing sketch comedy and learned the same lesson as the fictional Amy without the help of a decent guy. "Trainwreck" disappointed me because rather than explore the path she took in reality, she takes the easy way out. She invents the right guy to point her on her way. As a comedian, Schumer's genius is that she places herself in the center of her own skits. There is a certain vulnerability to Schumer's most fearless critiques, as she shines the mirror as harshly on herself as she does the world around her. At times, it makes her feel like an everywoman and at times, uniquely and unapologetically herself. With "Trainwreck," she looks away from that mirror, and the film feels less for it. For her next film, I hope she stares at it, unblinkingly, all the whole way through.
Share This Article
